Turn a Blankie into a Pillowcase when Sleepovers Begin!

Our 10-year-old niece, Molly, still likes to sleep with her “blankie.” With more and more sleepover invites, she was starting to feel kind of embarrassed about taking her blanket with her. Also, her blanket is about the size of a washcloth and has gotten misplaced many times. Her mom came up with the idea to make her a pillowcase out of the same minky fleece fabric.

We found a simple “pattern” for a pillowcase on this website http://www.craftandfabriclinks.com/pillowcases/cases.html. We basically just needed the measurements for the finished pieces and pattern pieces. Since it is essentially sewing a rectangle, we didn’t find it necessary to cut pattern pieces.

We decided on a standard size pillow case, but you can adjust sizes for a Queen or King size pillowcase. A finished standard size pillowcase is 20 inches by 30 inches.

Step One:

Prewash the fabric to account for any shrinkage.

Step Two:

Cut fabric to desired size. The pattern size for a standard case is 44″ x 36″ (you may not have to cut one edge if your fabric comes as 44 inches). This leaves you room for folding a hem on the pillowcase and seams on the sides and end.

The minky fabric we chose is very stretchy so we recommend using a lot of pins to hold the fabric in place as you cut and sew.

Step Three:

Fold a 5″ hem at top of pillowcase and sew seam. This will be seen from the outside, so sew on the “good” side of the fabric.

Step Four:

Fold fabric with “good” sides together (inside out) and sew long side seam. Again, we recommend using a lot of pins with stretchy fabric to keep sides lined up. Hem seam should line up on both sides.

Step Five:

Pin and sew bottom seam, then turn it right-side out.

Finished Product:

Molly’s pink blanket from when she was a baby and her new, green pillowcase blanket 🙂